Why does Word generate random documents on Mac desktop?

[cfang711]

I've noticed that every so often, a random word document appears on my
Mac desktop. They are always named something crazy like "zc6t0jtb.doc"
or "1vtuba33.doc". I can't seem to figure out why this happens or how
to make it stop happening. I never open these files - I just dump them
into my trash. This has been happening on my work computer and my
personal home computer, which are both Macs, and I can't seem to find
any documentation online about this issue. Can anyone help?

 

[CyberTaz]

Are you saving files directly to your Desktop? Are you leaving Word and.or
documents open while shutting down, logging out, etc.? Having to Force Quit
for some reason?

What you are seeing are temporary files created by Word while working with
the documents. They're actually placed in the same working folder as the doc
they're associated with, so you usually never see them. Normally they are
deleted when Word is Quit appropriately, but the habits/happenings above as
well as others prevent Word from doing its "routine housekeeping", so some
temp files don't get expunged as they should. Also, OS X sometimes seems to
be a bit more recalcitrant about allowing them to be cleared from the
Desktop than is the case if they are in an actual user folder.

As long as Word isn't running at the time deleting them manually should not
be a problem.